If the government did promise to abolish upfront fees then its proposed amendment to the Freedom of Information Bill which seeks to maintain upfront fees and to increase fees for initial requests constitutes a complete about turn by the government and a clear breach of its promise to the public when it was elected in 2011.

It is worth recalling that before 2003 upfront fees were not charged for initial FOI requests, internal appeals or for appeals to the Information Commissioner. In 2003, however, the FF/PD administration introduced upfront fees by inserting Section 47(6A) into the Freedom of Information Act. At the time this was considered to represent a significant undermining of the effectiveness of the Freedom of Information regime in Ireland. The Information Commissioner herself pointed out that the introduction of upfront fees led to a significant drop in requests and appeals, particularly from journalists.

So what did the government actually promise in relation to FOI upfront fees?

We will radically overhaul the way Irish politics and Government work. The failures of the political system over the past decade were a key contributor to the financial crisis and the system
must now learn those lessons urgently.

Government is too centralised and unaccountable. We believe that there must also be a real shift in power from the State to the citizen.

We will legislate on the issue of cabinet confidentiality.

We will legislate to restore the Freedom of Information Act to what it was before it was underined by the outgoing Government, and we will extend its remit to other public bodies including the administrative side of the Garda Síochána, subject to security exceptions.

We will extend Freedom of Information, and the Ombudsman Act, to ensure that all statutory bodies, and all bodies significantly funded from the public purse, are covered.

So the government promised to restore the FOI Act to what it was before the 2003 amendment. This could not be clearer. It is impossible to read this other than a promise and a commitment by the Irish government to undo the amendments made in 2003 including the amendment whichh inserted Section 47(6A) and introduced upfront fees for the first time.

It doesn’t matter that we are constrained economically – we were similarly constrained in 2011 when the program for government was published. Similarly it doesn’t matter that the upfront fee is only a small fraction of the costs of FOI administration or that it violates the newly discovered principle of one issue – one fee. The government made an unqualified promise to the people and it should stick to it.

Hedigan J granted a protective costs order to an applicant wishing to use Section 160 of the Planning and Development Act to prevent alleged unauthorised development at a waste facility close to her home.

Protective costs orders originate from Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention which provides that litigation in certain environmental matters should not be prohibitively expensive. This provision was implemented in Ireland through Part 2 of the Environment (Miscellaneous Provisions) Act 2011 which protects an applicant from having costs awarded against them should they be unsuccessful.

This is the first time in Ireland that such an application has been successful and importantly the Court clarified the information that should be provided to ground a motion for a protective costs order.

The Court referred specifically to Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention as well as the recent ECJ judgment in Edwards -v- Environment Agency (Case C-260/11) which clarified the meaning of prohibitively expensive under European law.

This judgment is significant not just in terms of planning law but also for access to environmental information law since persons appealing to the High Court against decisions of the Commissioner for Environmental Information may also apply for protective costs orders.

The impermisibility of charging search and retrieval fees has been clear since an earlier 2008 decision of the Commissioner in Open Focus and Sligo County Council. In that case (which was not appealed) the issue of discretionary fees, although not the main issue, was examined in detail by the Commissioner who found that search and retrieval fees are not permitted:

“Furthermore, in order for a decision maker within the Council to deal with the request for information and form a view as to whether it could be supplied under the Regulations, it would be necessary for the information at issue to be identified and retrieved. There is no provision in the Directive or in the Regulations for the charging of fees for the processing of a request for access to environmental information. Following the assessment of the information and, as in this case, a decision to release it, I consider that it is the next step – the supply of the information to the requester in copy form – that potentially attracts the charge.”

Accordingly since May 2008 public authorities should have been under no doubt that search and retrieval fees were not permitted to be charged. Worryingly the Open Focus decision seems to have been completely ignored by most public authorities including, it must be said, the Department of the Environment which up until this month continued to publish guidelines which explicitly stated that search and retrieval fees could be charged.

Only after the Commissioner decided against the Department of the Environment itself has it finally decided to modify its guidelines to bring them into compliance with the Open Focus decision.

Interestingly the issue had not been subject to a definitive adjudication in the UK until 2011 when the Upper Tier Tribunal in Kirklees Council v Information Commissioner and PALI Ltd [2011] UKUT 104 held that such fees may not be charged for in situ examination and the First Tier Tribunal further held in Leeds City Council -v- Information Commissioner that charges could only be levied for the costs of transferring environmental information (e.g. costs of reproduction) to a requestor who did not wish to examine it in situ. Each of these cases arose from appeals by commercial property searchers (who provide responses to standard Law Society questionnaires as part of conveyancing transactions) against search and retrieval fees charged by local authorities for access to environmental information required by them to fill out the search questionnaires.

The UTT in Kirklees had little doubt on the issue:

“[98] We also disagree with Mr Coppel’s submission that the word “supply” in that sense can be extended to cover the process of locating and retrieving information for examination. We consider that the proper reading of Article 5(2) of the Directive and Regulation 8(2)(b) of the EIR is to prevent a public authority from charging an applicant for examining in situ the requested information and to permit fees to be imposed only for supplying the information in some different way, e.g. by provision of a copy of some sort. To put it simply, an authority that makes a charge for going and getting the information to make available for examination in situ, and refuses to make it so available unless the charge is paid, is not making that information available for examination without charge.”

Moreover, the FTT in Leeds City Council further emphasised the Kirklees decision:

“[78] … Kirklees confirms that a public authority may not impose any charge or recover any cost for making information available for inspection. It would be wrong, in principle and in light of the purpose of the Directive, that a public authority which has not done the work necessary to put in place systems so that the information is in a form in which it can be inspected, free of charge, to be able to pass on to a requester the costs of locating and retrieving the information to put it into a format in which it can be made available.”

and went on to hold that:

“[98] … having regard to the provisions and underlying aims of the legislation, the cost of ‘making available’ environmental information should be construed narrowly so as to apply only to the cost associated with the process of supplying (i.e. transferring) the information to an applicant once the requested information has been located, retrieved and put in disclosable form. Any other interpretation would have significant adverse consequences to those wishing to access environmental information.”

While the issue has not been the subject of a definitive decision by the CJEU it seems likely that this court will also follow the rationale of the Irish and UK cases. In fact in case C-217/97 Commission -v- Germany Advocate General Fennelly (as he then was and now a member of the Supreme Court) stated in his opinion at para 23:

“The notion of what is ‘reasonable‘ must in my view be interpreted in the light of the general scheme and purpose of the Directive, and of the context in which it is used. As already noted, the Directive proceeds upon the basis that access to environmental information will ‘improve environmental protection‘. Its primary objective is ‘to ensure freedom of access to … [such] information‘, and it seeks to achieve this end by obliging the Member States to ensure such informationis effectively ‘made available … to any natural or legal person at his request without his having to prove an interest‘. In the light of this objective and the means chosen to achieve it, the question of whether the charges for the supply of the information are ‘reasonable‘ must be judged from the perspective of the member of the public requesting the information, rather than from that of the public authority. While it does not expressly preclude a Member State levying a charge for the time and effort of public officials, such an approach seems to me to be fundamentally incompatible with the principal features of the Directive.”

Ultimately the ECJ (as it then was) did not need to rely on this element of AG Fennelly’s opinion but it seems likely that it would adopt it should the it be required to do so.

It seems that the conclusion to be drawn from these decisions is that there is a greater public interest in access to environmental information when compared to access generally under freedom of information. Accordingly, the question of which charges are permitted should be interpreted narrowly so that the objective of making environmental information available as widely as possible can be achieved. Therefore requesters should not be obliged to pay for the processing of a request, should be able to examine information in situ free of charge and should only pay the disbursements incurred by a public authority where copies of requested information is transmitted to them.

Ironically Mr Swords had to pay €150 to the Commissioner to lodge his appeal against a search and retrieval fee of €146.65 proposed by the Department of the Environment. Following the rationale of the Irish and UK decisions it seems unreasonable that the Commissioner should charge a fee for lodging an appeal since an appeal itself can be rightly viewed as a part of the processing of a request and not of supplying environmental information. Indeed very often an appeal to the Commissioner is necessary before any information is supplied.

At the very least it is now uncertain whether the Commissioner is entitled to levy this fee but we must wait until this issue itself is examined in an administrative tribunal or court before it can be resolved.

Gavin as the requester had no automatic right to be a notice party to the proceedings even though his right of access to information formed the subject matter and the decision of the Court to grant of a stay could affect that right adversely.

Luckily the judge asked that Gavin be invited to address the court. He was, in fact, the only party to put arguments against a stay being granted since the Commissioner has decided to remain neutral on this issue.

We already know that in late 2011 the Commissioner was on the point of consenting to an application by NAMA to ask the court to find in its favour and thereby ending the appeal and reversing the Commissioner’s decision. Without being a notice party we do not know why or in what circumstances the Commissioner continued to fight the appeal. Crucially, we did not have the right to make submissions on the issue but rather had to rely on the discretion of the Commissioner to inform us of the position.

It goes without saying that this situation is fundamentally unfair.

Indeed, Article 9 of the Aarhus Convention guarantees applicants a fair, equitable, timely and not prohibitively expensive judicial review process. However serious question marks must be raised concerning how this provision is implemented in Ireland since there is no automatic right for an applicant to be a notice party to judicial review proceedings initiated by a public authority against an administrative decision.

It is not like the State has no experience of this issue. Ireland has already lost a case in similar circumstances when the European Commission took Ireland to the ECJ concerning the non-implementation of the “not prohibitively costly” element of the review obligations. The ECJ found that discretionary practices (in relation to costs) cannot be considered to be a valid implementation of an obligation. Yet here we are today and a requester for environmental information has no automatic right to participate in the appeal procedure initiated by a public authority.

Leaving aside costs, the NAMA -v- Commissioner for Environmental Information case has exposed further flaws in the procedures for environmental judicial review where a public authority is the appellant. With a minimum 7 year delay for a final appeal in the Supreme Court the procedures clearly lack the timeliness required under the Aarhus Convention and with no automatic right to be a notice party a fundamental lack of fairness is built in to the structure of the current review procedure.

Guest post: Enda Cunningham is a news journalist with the Connacht Tribune Newspaper Group in Galway, where he has worked on a freelance and full-time basis since 1997. He is also a regular contributor to several national newspapers and radio stations and while he is an ‘all-rounder’, he has particular interests in the areas of planning, property, business and finance. He can be contacted at ‘enda AT ctribune DOT ie’. We have previously covered his work on this site. – Mark

—

Environment Minister John Gormley might be wasting his time with the remit of his ‘planning review‘ in Galway County Council, when a probe into their counterparts in Galway City Council could throw up some real gems, as I discovered.

There’s a lot of info in this post, so please bear with me.

When it comes to paying Development Contribution Levies, some builders in Galway City have been a bit lazy, and it’s taking the Council up to three years to chase up some of the debts, such was the leeway being given.

In fact, the Council is currently owed around €5.4m in unpaid development levies, €1.3m of this is being chased up through the District Court and High Court, while the rest is the subject of enforcement orders or is being paid by installment.

The single biggest debt relates to the abandoned Crown Square development in Mervue – headed up by Padraic Rhatigan of JJ Rhatigan and Walter King of GK Developments – where almost €2.1m is owed.

I had a lengthy sift through a couple of dozen Galway City Council planning files which turned up some very interesting information on several of the biggest developers in Galway during the boom years, but the real golden nugget that emerged from my investigation that must surely be a real cause of embarrassment for officials – a typo on a planning condition which could cost the Council €468,389.29.

In the early days of this blog we covered Oireachtas members’ expenses quite a bit. Using documents we’d FOId we calculated the average weekly, daily and hourly claims the top three ‘spenders’ were making. The Sunday Tribune published a double-page spread using the documents, and the Daily Mail mentioned the calculations. It made a bit of an impact.

Mark had promised to publish the same figures for an average TD but, unfortunately never got around to it. Life was hectic, it was simply too time consuming to lay out a spreadsheet in the same way with details for each person who has served in the Oireachtas since 2005. Of course things would have been easier had the Oireachtas sent us the documents in electronic format, as requested… but that’s a blog post for another day.

At the time there was lots of hand-wringing about expenses, Ken Foxe – may the country thank him – was in full flight with his prolonged FOI campaign on the topic, John O’Donoghue’s expenses in particular. Other journos were gradually climbing onto the bandwagon and the Government for various reasons, expenses not least among them, was looking shaky.

There was much talk of “fully vouched”, “transparency”, and “openness”.

It’s disappointing. The Oireachtas members – on all sides – have missed the point. Read the proposal and you’ll see it is focused on numbers. Instead of nine or ten headings under which expenses/allowances can be claimed, there’ll be two. They’ll be able to claim a travel and accommodation allowance and a public representation allowance.

The Examiner scooped me on Monday morning with their lede about the dual abode allowance, a story billed as a “revelation“.

I’d be working on-off on a piece on the DAA since August having heard it was racket for non-Dublin ministers.

To briefly explain: The Dual Abode Allowance is open to ministers and ministers of state from constituencies outside Dublin. It’s an income tax deduction which they can claim in a number of ways, depending on where they say they stay whilst attending the Dáil. There are no details on who avails of it, Revenue Commissioners cite “personal taxpayer confidentiality”, and several FOIs have been bounced in the last decade for the same reasons. So we know little of which ministers benefit from it, or to what extent. It’s rarely reported on due to this derth of information, though journalists and politicians know it’s there, and due to its quiet nature, it could be abused. It’s not a secret, if you ask someone relevant – even a politician – about it and they’ll admit it exists – it’s not the Delta Force of allowances, as some may have you believe*.

It works like this; if a minister or minister of state has a second home in the capital they can claim an allowance on the mortgage for that property and on the costs of maintaining it. The maintenance costs must be vouched, unless they wish to opt for a flat-rate allowance of €6,500 (nice option, huh?). Furthermore, if the property is purchased while they’re in office they can claim for the full costs of the solicitors and auctioneers fees involved.

Ministers who rent accommodation can claim allowance for the full rent that plus maintenance costs, or a flat-rate of €4,500 per annum.

Lastly, if they’re using a hotel or guesthouse while in Dublin they can claim for the full cost of staying there, plus “additional costs associated with maintaining a second residence in a hotel” (whatever they may be, in a hotel – considering they can claim subsistence expenses generally also). A relative or friend’s house may constitute a guesthouse.

18 office holders availed of the allowance in 2005, 15 in 2006 and 16 in 2007, according to documents volunteered in August to me by the Revenue Commissioners after a brief phone call. A follow up email resulted in them supplying totals from 2002, 2003 and 2004 also. I’ve put all that documentation into one file, it can be viewed here and includes breakdowns for 2005, 2006 and 2007, which may interest some. That is the same information Shaun Connolly used for his story on the front of Monday’s Examiner, which was followed up on Tuesday and Wednesday. As he correctly points out, the cost over five years to the exchequer was just more than €550,000.

While that may seem a large figure in its own right, I didn’t think much of it upon receipt of the information. At least 18 different ministers, over three years, an average of circa €5,000, it’s not going to bring down the house – sure, the Leinster House lads spend that in a weekend at the races. I thought there may have been more to it than simply the €550,000 number, so I went looking.

I took the names of cabinet ministers who could avail of allowance and their wives names to the Land Registry to see if any of them owned property in Dublin. After checking out the results, I had drawn a bit of a blank (such is journalism; shadows, cul de sacs etc) so I tried cross referencing a few bits and pieces.

I gathered the names of every person who had occupied a minister or minister of state’s position in since 2004 and began some serious Microsoft Excelling. When I had the list of names I added their constituencies to see how many would have been able to claim the allowance each year. This wasn’t as simple as it may sound, reshuffles meant 2 ministers occupied one post in the same year. The results of the cross referencing can be seen on sheet two of this document:

24 could have claimed DAA in 2004 – 13 did.

23 in 2005 – 18

24 in 2006 – 15

28 in 2007 – 18

The numbers of claimants were not supplied for the other years, so it could not be calculated.

2005 had the smallest differential between claimants and possible claimants, so I worked on that to try and discover who exactly was claiming the allowance that year. I found this article by Harry McGee from last year in The Irish Times archive which gave me some more info. McGee reported that Noel Dempsey and Dermot Ahern travel home each night after the Dáil, making it logical to assume they don’t claim the allowance.

That reduces the differential to 3… two of the possible claimants, Barry Andrews and Mary Hanafin, are from Dun Laoghaire, which is easily within driving distance of the Dáil (particularly when you’ve a ministerial car and driver), so it may be fair to assume they don’t sleep in the city when the Dáil is in session. Assuming they don’t claim leaves one non-claimant from 2005 that we don’t know about. Taking it that a minister claiming the allowance in 2005 has continued to do so, we can logically conclude that all bar one of the following is claiming DAA:

However, that relies on the taking Dermot Ahern and Noel Dempsey assertions that they travel home as a statement that they don’t claim the allowance and the assumption the two Dun Laoghaire representatives don’t claim.

In the end I got nothing unexpected, sometimes you chase stories and get nothing, no regrets.

Of course, the real story would be if Brian Cowen was still claiming it for his apartment behind the Four Courts, while having use of Farmleigh as Taoiseach. That was what I ultimately wanted to discover, unfortunately I didn’t have the resources to do so. Someone should consider asking An Taoiseach that question…

Note: A TD is claiming whilst not using the property personally – e.g. allowing a son or daughter to use the property while attending college in Dublin – is what is referred to in the UK as ‘house flipping’. And we know what happened when MPs admitted to that…

Footnote A:I am aware there is an FOI being appealed on further details of the DAA at present.

Footnote B:It was still worth going after the bigger story to get scooped on the smaller one.

Footnote C:Enda Kenny has said he will abolish this allowance if he becomes Taoiseach; populist rhetoric of which I believe not a word. But I’ve taken note.

—

* now that you know about the uber-secret allowance, I will have to kill you.

As reported by the Tribune, the three biggest expense claimants over the last four years were Ned O’Keeffe of Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael’s Pat Breen and the independent TD Michael Lowry, so I’ve been looking at them to begin.

Before I go any further I wish to say I’ll be getting the median claimant and doing something similar to this at a later date too, before any one tells me I’m a populist gobshitefor picking the top three (I knew that already).

Messrs Breen, O’Keeffe and Lowry all claimed within €10,000 of €300,000 for the period covering 2005 to 2008, mainly for the same things, so for the purpose of this post I’ll won’t be differentiating between them. Additionally, Gavin has since received documents for 2003 and 2004 – which he’ll post when he gets a chance – so I’ll be including their details from those years here too. Therefore the following numbers could from FOI documents for 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 for Pat Breen, Ned O’Keeffe and Michael Lowry. Feel free to challenge my methodology, or attempt to use your own, but I’m fairly confident in my maths (while welcoming confirmation/correction from those more qualified in the field)…

All of this is ontop of the their salaries of around €100,000 per annum.

Over six years they claimed €1,319,070.49 (€1.3m) between the three of them.

In an average year they each claimed €75,110.21(Seventy five thousand one hundred and ten euro, and twenty-one cent).

That works out at €205.78 every single day, [Annual figure divided by 365].

Which equals €1440.46 per 7 days. [Daily figure multiplied by seven]

However, I know most years the Dáil sits just 96 days per year, so that means they claimed: €782.39 per sitting day. [Total figure divided by 3 then divided by 576 – which is 96 multiplied by six]

…but I also know TDs say they do crazy hours in their constituency. If I take it that they’ve worked every day except Sundays and the 9 public holidays for all six years, the figure is €247.07 per working day. [365 minus 52 (Sundays per year) and nine (Bank holidays per year), then multiplied by six, all divided into the total expenses figure of €1.3m, then divided by three]

Finally, I’ve calculated that if on every one of those days, (six days per week for six years, without exception – no holidays, no half-days, no sick leave) they worked for 12 hours, they’d be claiming €20.59 per hour. [€247.07 divided by 12]

Note:the minimum wage is €8.65. Jobs Seekers Allowance is around €200 per week. And as stated, the above is on top of large salaries.

What do you make of that? That’s some amount of phone calls, and some serious petrol and lunch bills if you ask me.

Two things I’d like to know: Why did Ned O’Keeffe claim €675 just last year for an ISDN line. Those lines are out-dated and useless for nothing except radio interviews… and very rarely used for those as a phone line is almost always more than sufficient. They’re slightly quicker than dail-up for browsing the internet, and far slower than an off-the-shelf broadband package, what’s he using the line for so? It certainly doesn’t sound like he used it for the interview with Newstalk I drew attention to a few weeks ago. Remember? The one where he waffled about politicians being value for money and expenses keeping corruption to a minimum… I wonder if he’d appear on morning radio to defend his expenses now? Hmmm.

Also, what do the constituency offices of these three lads look like? They spent about €52,ooo each on their constituency offices between 2003 and 2008, the offices all must be century-old manor houses in need of constant maintenance if they cost that much to keep upright, surely?

—

Footnote: The Sunday Tribune used the documents Gavin published here last week for their frontpage story and a double-page spread inside yesterday, taking the details to an audience larger than we could hope for here. Their report was followed up on RTÉ Radio too. I noticed BreakingNews.ie said “some newspapers” had reported the information, if you spotted them in papers other than the Trib, do let us know. In fact, if you notice what appears to be one of our stories in any media, whether we’re mentioned or not, throw us a mail [tips AT thestory DOT ie].

We’re not interested in invoicing or shaming those who don’t credit us (though we’re no fans of the latter), just in seeing how the information disseminates. Thus far we’re aware of mentions in the Sunday Times, Irish Times, Daily Mail, Sunday Tribune, Irish Examiner, and of course Gavin’s appearance on RTÉ’s Prime Time. Not bad for a project that only started seven weeks ago, but we’d like to keep track…

I have responded to the Oireachtas, seeking all expenses data from January 1, 2003 to December 31, 2004. I have sought an estimate of how much this is likely to cost.

The Oireachtas communications office has also been in touch regarding the letter I received, and I am happy to give them an opportunity to respond:

“The letter which was sent to you about your freedom of information request used the phrase “there is a gap in the hard copy records” and this gave the impression that there was a gap in the records on members’ expenses held by the Houses of the Oireachtas. When it said that there was a gap in the hard copy records in respect of the period from 1st January 1998 to 31st March 1998 and for the month of May 2000, this means that these dates were not covered by previously existing FOI requests. You had specifically sought previously released information and we were simply trying to point out that not all of the periods sought by you were covered under previously released FOI requests.

In addition, you might wish to be aware that, the period 1st January 98 – 31st March 98 is outside the scope of FOI as FOI only came into effect in 21st April 98.

As for the three periods

April 1999 to October 1999

June 2000 to June 2001

July 2002 to June 2003

The letter said that it was unclear that the final released data is available for those periods as the material has not, as yet, been located:

Again, this may have given the impression that our records were incomplete. But this is not the case. The requests for those periods was in the early days of FOI when everything was done manually. We don’t have ready access to those files, but they’re not missing. They do exist but it will take some time and effort to locate them. You will not be charged for the time taken to locate the files but you may be charged for the retrieval and copying of the records on them which is mandatory under the FOI Acts.”

For me though, the broader point is this: expenses data should be published online as a matter of course. I should not have to FOI this information, nevermind the costs issue.

Thank you to everyone for comments, suggestions and donations over the weekend in reference to our seeking information regarding expenses from the Houses of the Oireachtas, 1998 – 2008. It is all very much appreciated. I want to outline a number of options available, and what myself and Mark have looked at in terms of where to go from here.

First, donations since Friday: €520 (with more pledged in the event of moving forward). Thank you everyone.

Second, I should make a point regarding the quality of the information we are seeking. Expenses claimed by TDs and Senators are generally vague. This is a product of the system that has been constructed by the Oireachtas. The information we would receive would not be at the level of detail of recent disclosures concerning John O’Donoghue (they were from a Department). The information would be broad amounts under broad headings, containing mainly sub-total and total figures. Many expenses remain unvouched, so members are not required to produce receipts in order to claim.

The rationale for claiming this information is this: it at least puts these broad amounts, by TD/Senator, on the record. This is a starting point or foundation for where we move in terms of getting more information. All of this information is also sought for eventual inclusion into member profiles on KildareStreet. I believe getting this information on the record is worth the effort, whatever about the cost, which leads me to the next point.

There are a number of options open to us, including:

1) Inspecting the records in person
2) Restricting the request to a tighter date range, in order to reduce costs
3) Seeking to raise the full amount
4) Seeking out a TD to get the information for us

1) Remains a possibility, and may be an option for a future FOI
2) and 4) are being actively considered
3) Is I feel asking too much in one go

So our proposition is this:

Request a restricting of the date range, and receive a new cost estimate for that date range. We propose starting chronologically and first seeking all expenses data for 1998 and 1999. While we await that revised cost estimate (which I imagine would be entirely covered by donations already received), we will pursue asking a TD to table a question to get the data.

Depending on the outcome of that, we would get the 1998/99 data initially, and then go after the following years over the coming months, spreading the cost out. People would also get to see the quality (or lack of quality) of the data we are receiving from the Oireachtas.

Post script: I shared a byline on a story in the today’s Irish Examiner about this issue.

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